


It Will Come Back

by bluesyturtle



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Coda, Episode Tag, Episode: s03e07 Digestivo, Gen, Platonic Female/Male Relationships, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-19
Updated: 2015-07-19
Packaged: 2018-04-10 04:49:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4377803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluesyturtle/pseuds/bluesyturtle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This isn't a real summary. This is me complaining about Chiyoh and Hannibal not having five hours of screen time together and AGONIZING OVER THE FACT THAT WE--ahem, that we got one conversation between them. When I needed twelve thousand. Minimum.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It Will Come Back

**Author's Note:**

> _It can’t be unlearned / I’ve known the warmth of your doorways / Through the cold, I’ll find my way back to you_

“He told me you pushed him from a train,” he said after a long time had passed between them in silence. The growing dark of night crept toward them from the horizon, as patient and unforgiving as time itself. “Did you enjoy it?”

Chiyoh smiled, a small, fluttering accident where it stumbled across her mouth. It had been so many years since he last saw her. She was a girl then, focused and determined but wild in her way.

“No.”

“You’re smiling.”

He gave her one of his own, soft and wide. It was the smile he let Abigail see, and Will.

And Will.

Reluctant to admit it, she said, “Your obsession with him is unfathomable to my mind.”

She circled one focused finger around the aperture rear sight on her rifle. It was laid across her lap like an animal at rest. Her gaze flicked up from her hands to his face. How young she looked, dark eyes wide and impossibly reverent as she gazed upon him even now. There was some hostility for years wasted, perhaps, though he couldn’t be sure yet if she saw them as such.

He felt, actually, that she was angry for where they were and for his decision to surrender. It was not in her to give up so easily. It never had been. Even when they played their games with the firewood and she couldn’t match his olfactory perception, her stubbornness helped her to keep pace with him.

“Do you suppose you might never understand?”

He meant it to be quite a serious question, in spite of how he veiled it in play. Chiyoh understood him. She always had, as much as he had allowed.

“You confess it.”

“I do,” he said.

She didn’t smile, but he saw her expression shift from timidity to tenderness. “Then I am sorry for your loss.”

Hannibal pressed his hand to one of the many thin trees thriving on Will’s land. He imagined a white hot brand protruding from the center of his palm to brand the bark with his sigil like the brand that had been left on his back. A single piece of him buried in this place that he may never see again. He’d marked Will already; left him ‘with a smile,’ reportedly.

Better a scar right there on Will’s belly than anything the earth or its elements could take from him. Infinitely better. He could be satisfied with it for the rest of his life.

Pity Will couldn’t. Tragic that time would not reverse for them this one more time.

But then again, maybe it would. He had only ever known a shattered teacup to reassemble itself after the point of obliteration, and never before. Time could favor them still, and only time would produce a verdict.

Hannibal was like the swelling dark of nightfall: patient, merciless. Unforgiving.

Or was he forgiving? It was difficult to ever really release his pain, though he craved closure in any capacity that could be granted to him. He had the nagging sense that he would always forgive Will and that he would always crave Will’s forgiveness in return. And to seek those small delights, greater catastrophes would continue to befall them.

Neither of them could claim victory over the other. Will had come to this conclusion already. It left a bad taste in Hannibal’s mouth.

Lights flashed in the distance. Time was upon him. The teacup had shattered.

He started to step out of their stolen pocket in the muted wilderness, intent on reversing the clock’s hands second for second. Chiyoh stopped him before he could leave their black shroud and before the lights had emerged from the roads.

She told him, “Do you know where you can find me?” and it was not a question.

_I will wait for you. I will watch for you. I will be there,_ he heard her say with the vehement austerity that shone in her eyes.

All their time apart and she had never lost her knack for communicating the depth of her ambition and of her loyalty to him with those eyes alone. His final glimpse of her in Lithuania had captured her in all her noble sagacity and he was proud of her in that time had not touched this sacred piece of her.

She remained whole. For all that Will misread her and for all that he underestimated her willpower and her cunning, Chiyoh was herself as he remembered.

The biggest difference was the gun she now held at waist-level across her body in a position that was safe for them both. She had him in her sights twice now and he had only ever felt protected. He wished, someday, that Will could look at his hands and into his eyes and only ever feel protected.

By then, maybe they would have stopped harming each other. Maybe they would have forfeited forgiveness as a lost cause.

Maybe.

“Goodbye, Chiyoh.”

_Now I will be a prisoner and you will be free._

She said nothing. She stepped back further into the shadows so that he could only just make out the shape of her silhouette. He watched her raise her sights to the approaching vehicles and hold. It was a shame they were out of time. He loved to look on her and to watch her, precisely as he had left her and precisely as she had elected to be.

Hannibal raised his hands and walked into the light, leaving the darkness curling after his heels.

**Author's Note:**

> Title and lyrics from Hozier
> 
>  
> 
> *I guess this is kind of a serious little ficlet thing, but it's titled "Chiyohnibble" in my documents so. Take that how you will.


End file.
